Human Touch
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Some time between the attack on Sarif Industries and returning to work, Adam attempts a form of human interaction that involves coffee and a hook up. It doesn't go to plan.


Her name is Chloë. She has blonde hair, green eyes, and a newly-installed synthetic spine; wears sleek blue-tinted glasses rimmed in chrome; takes her coffee with cream and no sugar, and tastes of cigarettes. That's about the extent of everything Adam knows about her. Kissing her vigorously as he pushes her through the doorway to his apartment, he doesn't need to know any more.

They've only met the once—properly, about four hours ago—but seen each other twice. She'd been in the waiting room at the LIMB clinic last week when both of them had had their physio appointments. This week she'd said hello. Then she'd asked about coffee, which they'd decided to do right then and there, and finally she'd all but invited herself back to his apartment. Adam, in a move that had surprised even himself, had said yes.

_Why did you agree to that? _was the immediate thought that flashed through his head, followed almost as quickly by an answer. _Be less lonely to go home with someone, wouldn't it?_

When she'd started to kiss him, he hadn't protested. Instead he reciprocated with a determined yet half-hearted show of passion and tried not to pretend she was Megan instead.

The only interruption as they enter comes in the form of the automated voice greeting him, "_Welcome home, Mr Jensen_," which draws a chuckle from Chloë.

"What, she not acknowledge guests?"

He mumbles a response between kisses. "Make you feel unwelcome?"

"No, you're—" Chloë gasps against his mouth, hands moving to grip his head and fingers tugging at his hair. Some sensor alerts him to the pressure on the titanium plating in his skull. "You're taking care of that."

In a move that scares him more than he thinks it should, Adam lets the shields across his eyes slide back and kisses her deeper. She's more aggressive than he'd been prepared for, and as he pushes her up against the wall by the kitchen door she lifts her legs to hook around his hips. He grunts, unsure if the new joints can take it, but even as he feels the twinge of artificial muscle pulling at the half-healed natural tissues, the augmented limbs take her weight like she's nothing. There's no other reaction from his body as he picks her up and carries her down the steps towards the bedroom.

_You don't have to do this, Adam. Do you even want to do this?_

He doesn't answer himself. The degree of control he has as he lowers her onto the bed that's nearly level with the floor surprises him, his augmentations distributing the strain evenly along his spine. Chloë pushes the coat from his shoulders and then there's a sudden moment of panic as he realises she's going for his shirt.

The augmentations are bare underneath. Incisions on his chest are still healing, metal mounted under his skin accessible by ports dotted around his collarbone. So far, only David and the doctors at the clinic have seen.

Deer in headlights, Adam does nothing to stop her, lifting his arms as if they belong to somebody else. The last line of defence is stripped away and then he's all exposed metal and damaged flesh. Chloë doesn't flinch. She sits up, kisses him on the lips again, then with a gentle twist she flips them, pushing his back to the mattress as she straddles his hips. Her fingers begin to work at the buttons of her own blouse.

With something to prove, Adam reacts quicker this time, reaching up to help with the unbuttoning and determined that the fine motor skills won't be a foil. They aren't, but the hard smoothness of his fingertips doesn't help, and suddenly he's acutely aware of his lack of a human feature as simple as fingernails. Chloë sheds the garment quickly and Adam's sure he's expected to go for her bra next, but as his fingers brush her skin, he pauses.

It's not enough to touch—he has to look. There's no shortage of sensors clustered in the synthetic dermal layer of his hands, but it isn't just the strange way his brain interprets the signals that draws his eye. His hand rests on her ribcage, sleek carbon black and shining golden accents. Cold. Robotic. Inhuman.

For the first time, Chloë seems to notice something's wrong. "Adam?"

Tearing his eyes from the monstrosity that's attached to him, he blinks up at her. "You...like this?"

His tone is somewhere between incredulous and fearful. She laughs nervously. "What, you think I've never hooked up with an aug before?"

Perhaps it's meant to put him at ease, but it doesn't help. He feels her sigh, and then with surprising gentleness she reaches up to place her hand over his. Carefully, she guides his touch higher, over her ribs until she's holding his palm against her chest. The sensors interfacing with his brain tell him she's warm, her grip is firm, and somewhere beneath his hand is a heartbeat. If there's any sense of pleasure meant to be associated with that, that neural pathway hasn't been forged yet.

Chloë lets him linger there a few moments, and then lifts his hand to her lips and gently kisses his knuckles. He doesn't feel it—not truly, all raw sensory data that his brain struggles to interpret with context or emotion—but watching her do it means something. Their eyes lock onto each other's through the pale blue tint of Chloë's glasses.

With a twist of her hand that presses them palm-to-palm, interlocking their fingers, Chloë lowers his hand towards the pillow above his head. She leans in with it, pressing her lips to his once again, softer this time. Less urgent. Almost tender.

Adam returns the kiss, daring to let his free hand roam to her back, and feels the indents of chrome rivets lining her spine. He's surprised by how much detail he can pick out, even with his brain still adapting to the new inputs, and when his fingers find the clasp of her bra he unhooks it without trouble.

She smiles against his mouth, then straightens up to shrug the bra off of her arms. A scramble to shed more of their clothes follows. If Adam had wanted to back out, it's too late. Boot laces are undone, pants come off, and Adam sees the poorly-disguised surprise on Chloë's face as though she'd half expected him to be all machine.

It stings. _If she thought that, why is she doing this? _he wonders. _Why am I doing this?_

He still doesn't have an answer for himself.

Not wanting her to look too closely at the parts where metal meets flesh, he pulls her towards him and kisses her fiercely. Chloë grinds onto him and he wonders if _maybe, now, please _his body will start to respond as if he were still red-blooded human more than machine. There's nothing.

It doesn't perturb her. He feels her grasping at his thighs, a strange sensory cascade of triggering pressure points without any give beneath her hand, entirely unlike the way her own flesh is soft and yielding beneath his metal fingers. Disgust pooling in his belly, Adam screws his eyes shut and grips her harder, hoping in vain to at last feel something more than just a detached sequence of data inputs.

Chloë gasps, and with a lurch he realises the sound is pained. _Pressure control. I still haven't mastered that._

"I'm sorry…" He blurts it out, horror in his voice as he lets go, but Chloë grasps for his hands and pulls him closer.

"No. Don't stop. Please. I can take it."

Heart hammering, Adam swallows and prays he can be gentle. Black fingertips rake along her back, too blunt to mark it as he feels the ridges of her prosthetic spine able to withstand his unintended force. Chloë begins to pepper her kisses along his jaw, moving towards his throat, and then her lips are on the carbon fibre implants jutting through his skin.

No artificial nerve endings there. Like those parts are nothing but dead.

Adam's stomach flips over. He's more metal and polymer now than flesh, but he's not sure that even the fully organic parts feel like they belong to him anymore. He wants to surrender them to her, let her do what she will if maybe there's someone out there who can still derive pleasure from his mutilated body, but he can't escape his own head.

There's a few square centimetres of skin remaining on his inner thighs—soft flesh where the anchors of the prosthesis are sculpted around it, leaving the nerve endings intact—and as Chloë's fingers tease it in a caress, it finally becomes too much.

Adam tenses, entire body seizing as he's almost unable to breathe. "Chloë, wait. Stop." His voice is a strained rasp. "I can't."

He can barely work his alien limbs to push her off, so he's grateful when she does it on her own, lifting her body from his and blinking down in confusion. "Adam?"

The hurt in her eyes feels like a knife to the heart. "I'm sorry. I thought I could do this. I...I was wrong."

Chloë frowns, and then, blinking rapidly, she rolls off of him, pulling up the sheets to cover herself as a sudden look of shame crosses her face. She's still wearing the glasses. Adam watches her remove them to wipe at her eyes.

"Chloë, it's not you…"

She cuts him off with an irritated shake of her head. "Don't be trite, Adam. I know. " He watches in surprise as a tear slips down her cheek. Chloë clenches her jaw, then the next words to spill from her lips are a confession. "I get it—I was too forward; too presumptuous. I...I lied to you. I haven't hooked up with an aug before." She makes an effort to look at his face, but finds that she can't. "Barely hooked up with anyone—nobody wants to sleep with the hunchback girl. I thought maybe now the scoliosis is fixed I could get any guy I wanted, but I should have known better."

The revelation makes him tense, and a sudden lance of hurt strikes through his own guilt. "What was I? An easy target?"

"No, you—" She clutches the sheets tighter, avoiding his eyes. "You just seemed as lonely as I was."

_That's probably true, _he thinks. It doesn't give her an excuse. "Sorry to disappoint."

"No, you didn't—" Chloë takes a breath and wipes at her eyes again. "I'm sorry. I was just so scared you might reject me I wanted to get you into bed before you had chance. Never even occurred to me that after..." She makes a vague gesture indicating the still-healing wounds on his torso. "After all that it might not be so easy for you." A beat. "Do you want me to leave?"

Adam considers. He knows how it will feel if he spends the night alone in his apartment again—quiet, safe, and desperately lonely. Letting her stay would be an unknown. Even after what she's just said, that prospect doesn't terrify him as much as he thought it would.

Green eyes, moments ago evasive, now stare at him wide and glistening, and Adam realises he's struck with a sudden sense of pity. He can't decide if it's worse that it might be for her or for himself. "Do you want to?"

They both avoid an answer. Silence drags on uncomfortably, and then Chloë squints and huffs in frustration. "This is ridiculous—I can't even see you from here," she rambles, awkwardly changing the subject as she unfolds the arms of her glasses again. There's an uneasy relief that comes with knowing she can't see him well enough to read his face. "You know, if the new spine worked out, I thought I'd get my eyes done next. Then maybe I'd at least be able to see beyond the end of my nose."

Adam frowns, watching her wipe the tear-smudged lenses on the sheets and resisting the urge to let his own eye shields slide into place. "I'm sure your eyes are healthy, even if they can't see very well. Plenty of places still do laser surgery. No need to get them replaced."

"Augments sure have plenty of perks, though."

"They're overrated." He pauses, feeling that sink in. "You have pretty eyes. Don't cut them out."

Something in his voice has her blinking then squinting at him again. The glasses are still clutched in her hand. Slowly, she lowers them. "You mean that?"

"Sure."

The tiny smile she gives in response is nice. "If I stayed, we don't have to…?"

"No, we don't."

"So, are you going to kick me out?"

Part of him still thinks he should. Adam has made up his mind. "No." He holds out an arm, inviting her to come closer.

Relief showing on her face, Chloë does. She settles herself against his chest, resting her head on the flat planes between the metal ridges under his skin, and snuggles closer. Adam wraps an arm around her, taking care to keep the sheet between them, but she tugs it away and grasps his hand so that his metal is against her skin. He blinks once in surprise, and then lets her.

They lie together, breathing quietly and saying nothing.

"Didn't expect a cybernetic heart to sound like this," Chloë comments after a while.

The statement takes him a little by surprise. "It's not cybernetic."

"No?"

"Mostly. One of the few parts they didn't replace."

"Oh." A pause. "It's nice."

Adam isn't quite sure why that makes him smile, but he squeezes her tighter and feels grateful to her for saying it.

Staring up at the ceiling, he feels the weight of her on his chest, solid and warm like Megan used to be. Comforting, maybe. He still wonders if he'd rather be alone.

_Why are you doing this, Adam? _he'd kept asking himself. _Just to see if you still can?_

He isn't sure if the answer is what he'd hoped.


End file.
